Thank you. An unsurpassed penetrating and perfect dharma is

[01:12]

Good morning. Good morning. So we are at the beginning of seven days of celebrating our lives. Of just being available, cultivating being available to the life, the unlimited life that runs through

[02:26]

this body that expresses this particular being through this body we have right now. And independent of what we think of this body, what we think its limitations are, the life that flows through us is unlimited. And our being is so completely interconnected with everything that it is infinite and unlimited to. So we are all in the, or most of all, definitely I am, in the process of kind of settling down. I feel like I've put myself in the bamboo tube, you know, the snail in the bamboo tube. and its usual movements, how I regulate my nervous system, what I do when, when I have the freedom to do my habitual things that make me feel like me and good, or kind of limited by the schedule, mainly by the schedule.

[03:56]

I committed to follow completely. So I don't know how you feel, but my mind, together with a really interesting night, with a radiator that was very hot and made incredible noises, and I couldn't turn it off. So I had very, very little sleep, because it's right where my bed is. couldn't move the bed either. So, all this I feel like is part of, if I don't pay attention, kind of creating a mind that comes up with plenty of alternatives that are better than this. So, How can we settle down? Can you turn down the sound a little bit? I feel like there's an echo.

[04:57]

Do you hear that too? Is it better? Up to me, for me it's better. Can you still hear me? Okay, great. So what we need to do, I think, for all of us is to actually cultivate a really kind environment in which Pema Chodron says, learning how to be kind to ourselves. learning how to respect ourselves is important. The reason it is important is that fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves we are discovering. We are discovering the universe. So my mind creating, you know, wonderful alternatives that are not where my body is, that are somewhere else, you know, is a confused mind.

[06:08]

You know, in many, many texts, Stogen says in the Fukanzasengi and in other texts it says, when the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. So then how do we create a kind environment for a confused mind? How do we cultivate a basic openness? And I want to read something from Blanche Hartman, which has been at Scent Center with her husband Lou when I arrived in 88. And through all these years, still two years ago, I think. I can't even remember, three years ago. And she was a formidable sitter. Her Zazen posture was so there.

[07:12]

She was so present. And she, in her book that got put together by Saint-Ju Ursuline Manuel from... she gave, she says, beginner's mind is then practiced in action. So kindness is also cultivating a beginner's mind. And I like to say a beginner's heart. Quoting the Shusso, because heart and mind actually in the kanji character are the same character. There's no heart and mind have They're not two different ones. Beginner's heart is Zen practice in action. It is the heart that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. Beginner's mind is just present to explore and observe and see things as they are.

[08:22]

I think of beginner's mind as the mind that faces life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. I wonder what this is. I wonder what that is. I wonder what it means. Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgment, just asking, what is it? I was having lunch with Indigo, a small child at city center. He saw an object on the table and got very interested in it. He picked it up and started fooling with it, looking at it, putting it in his mouth and banging on the table with it, just engaging with it without any previous idea of what it was. For indigo, it was just an interesting thing, and it was a delight to him to see what he could do with this thing.

[09:25]

You and I would see it and say, it's a spoon, it sits there, and you use it for soup. It doesn't have all the possibilities that he finds in it. So cultivating... giving yourself a big field in the narrow bamboo tube of the schedule, in your heart giving yourself a big field, in your mind giving yourself a big field, and using your body, which is how you're actually alive, how actually anything you do, think, feel. is possible, makes it possible. That's your body. You can't think without your body. You can't experience anything without your body.

[10:29]

You can't really be anywhere else than where your body is, even though your mind might conjure up all these alternatives. And Dogen says of it, it is free from the world's dust. beyond the world's dust, says in the Fukan Zazengi we read this morning. So can we befriend this body, finding the posture of this one period of Zazen that is the most aligned, the most upright, the most relaxed, So in the Fukun Sasengi, it says immovable.

[11:30]

It doesn't say immobile. Immovable is something different. I think what is meant there is every experience that comes up, everything you feel, see, hear, does not unseat you, does not move you away from being here. You allow it to be there and you allow it to go, to come and go. Feelings, sensations, thoughts. So that is being immovable. That's not the same thing as being rigid and stiff and kind of harsh in your body. Because your body is in constant movement. Digestion is going on, your heartbeat is going on, your blood is moving through your veins, hopefully, and continues to, and your breath is coming in and out.

[12:30]

So there is a lot of movement happening while we're sitting still. And we investigate, do we need to move now? Is this what's hurting in my knee? Does that need an adjustment? And I have a conversation with my knee. I go right into feeling where it hurts and say, can I stay like that for another breath? And my knee responds or my back and says, yes. So I take another breath and I ask again if it's still hurting. So sometimes when I have that dialogue that goes back and forth, several breaths, suddenly the back or the knee is not hurting anymore. then it starts hurting again. So I start the dialogue again. When it says, no, no more breath, I don't go, oh, before you could, you know, you could stay.

[13:31]

It was okay for five more breaths, so we'll do five more breaths. No. No, when it says no, you stop. You actually move your leg very quietly into a posture, a rest posture, and then rearrange it. So you don't... use what happened before to now impose it, what should happen now. You stay really in touch and you respect what message you get. That's one way of being kind with yourself. So shikantaza, just sitting, is what we're doing and it's a celebration of your being. which has been given to you, you didn't have to do anything for it, and you don't have to do anything for it. You can just be there for it and be amazed of what it is, which is something way beyond whatever we think about ourselves.

[14:36]

So sitting still, not engaging in thinking, which is... Maybe one way you could understand non-thinking that also Dogen recommends in the Fukanza Senki, which we will read a few times during this session. The non-thinking is not engaging in this thinking. It's not that there won't be thoughts coming by, but you don't grab them, you don't spin them, you don't create stories around them. You just see, oh, here comes this thought. It would be so much nicer to be in sunshine on the beach. Okay, I'm here. So you come back to your body. You don't go, oh, yeah, and then you daydream yourself through a period of suspense, which I'm able to do, and maybe a lot of you are able to do, to just daydream away to make the time pass.

[15:37]

But it's such a loss because we have God. we have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form. It's this shape, this body, with which we can wake up in this life. We don't know about former lives, and we don't know about later lives. It's this life we have, and right now, here. And you all signed up. You all had the impulse to come and sign up for this... Kind of unusual thing, down and do nothing for seven days. So Shikantasa is called just sitting. It's sitting still without a goal, without judging. This is good sitting, this is bad sitting, I did it better last year. It's just...

[16:39]

being here where you are with an open heart and an open mind, just allowing what is there to be there and be curious, like Blanche says in that little excerpt, like a child, what is it? Not to kind of, first probably comes right away, definition what it is. It's either something we like or something we... We don't want to intrude now. So then to just, can we kind of make a big space around and go, if I'm still with it, maybe there is a lot more. So Suzuki Roshi used to say, not always so. It's not always so what we think or what we see. It's more than that. It's way more. Can we... cultivate that and can we come back to our body so what can help us to settle and to kind of keep anchoring ourselves in the body that is here now and here now and always in the present and never somewhere else is kind of

[18:06]

feeling your breath. I wouldn't even want to necessarily say concentrate on your breath, just kind of the image that helps me is kind of thinking I'm a boat and I'm on this flow, the boat sits on this flow that flows into my body and flows out of my body. that flows into my body and can I feel where all it goes in my body? Does it go all the way down to my perineum? Does it go to my sides? Do my lungs really fill up? Is my diaphragm involved? So how far down? How far wide out? How high up? Can I feel my breath when it comes in? And Can I flow out with it and feel when it goes out, it goes in unlimited space?

[19:10]

The whole planet breathes the same air. It doesn't stop. And then it comes back in, and that's a kind of shape it comes in, and it changes the shape when it comes in. Can we feel the changes when it comes in? Can we flow out? And we're just sitting, our attention is just sitting like in a boat on that in and out movement that's happening. That's one way when we notice that we're engaged in worrying about something or thinking about something to come back into the body. And in the Satipatthana Sutta it then says this is how you are mindful of the body in the body. And it's also saying when you do that, you notice, oh, this is a short breath, this is a long breath, this is something in between, short and long, and you let it be the way it is, but you're aware of...

[20:27]

what kind of breathing is happening. Not your making, but it's happening while you're sitting in that boat, flowing in and out. So sitting, just sitting means also returning over and over to your body, to the present moment, to whatever is available to your experience, and trying to not be so much engaged in naming your experience, but be with it. So just when you have a feeling to probably immediately a name comes up, what feeling this is.

[21:31]

And then let that name just be. Don't engage it. Just feel, how actually do I know that it's that feeling? What is its energy? Where does it sit in the body? Because all of it has a place, has a response in the body or a location, an energetic location. So to go into the body and be interested in that. Where is it? Does it have a shape? Where does it end? What is its energy? That's also a way of being connected and becoming more intimate with our body. And that's a kind way of being because we're not judging. Each time judging comes up, maybe we think of grandmother mind. Grandmothers are very different than mothers. They have a different job, actually. It's not like mothers should be grandmothers, but grandmothers should be grandmothers or can be grandmothers.

[22:36]

Mothers, they have to make sure their child goes to school and does well and is healthy, and it's a totally different relationship. Grandmothers are like one removed from that responsibility. And they can just, because they're one step removed, they can see the whole being of the child much easier than grandfathers too. So I'm not excluding the men at all. Grandmother mind is as important as grandmother mind. So they can love the child. They can see what it needs. Not, oh, that gets into trouble at school with that and have to kind of negotiate that. They can just nourish the being of the child. I don't know if you had grandparents that were there for you and that you loved, but if you do, and you can feel what made you love them.

[23:48]

how they were capable to respond to you in a different way than your parents could. Not because something in your parents was missing or wrong, but their function and their task is totally different. So we're co-shaped by our tasks and functions. So now, here in the Sashin, you, asides from us who have a job, like give a talk, you can let go of all your functions and just be with yourself like a grandmother with a grandchild that she loves or a grandfather with the grandchild that he loves. And allow your being to be felt by you and to not have a job. If you're serving, then you have a job, but serving, you don't have a job.

[24:54]

And so if you can keep dropping when thoughts about your daily life, your functions you have in daily life, your tasks, your worries come in, can you just have them there but allow them to just sit there with you and not bother you, not pick them up and turn them and chew on them? get indigestion by them. To just say, yes, you're all here, and right now we're all sitting here having nothing to do. So we have the pivotal opportunity of human form And we're giving it seven days of a big field to show itself to us.

[25:59]

A big, wonderful amount of time to be curious and discover things we maybe didn't even know were there. If we... kind of sit down every Zazen period with that intention to just be curious like that child and just see what presents itself and leave it be. Let it be. So it's a little bit like Henry Thoreau wrote in Walden, if you sit long enough and still enough at the clearing in the woods. every animal of the woods will come and present itself to you. So the moment you start then getting all excited and going, oh, a bear, or oh, it will run away. If you can stay still, then you might see what a bear is, beyond what you think a bear is, because it will just go about its life in front of you.

[27:11]

or a fox, or a deer, or a bobcat, or a bird. And that's the same way of being there and feeling, seeing, hearing something appear and just letting it be. Not making it into a story, not grabbing it, because that's immediately limiting it to what we think. Thinking is a very, very limiting, it's a great capacity, but in zazen it's a limiting capacity. It's not helpful for zazen, just sitting, just being. So what also helps with settling in and which I would really want to encourage you to engage in is really observe complete silence during Sushi.

[28:39]

Can you be, unless it's for work, Just not speak. Even though it might be so tempting quickly in a corner to say something or to check your mail or to your messages on the phone and then respond. I don't know if you've put... automatic responder on your phone or told your people that you turn your phone off and if you have to maybe you check it once but unless you have to there is something that is necessary can you leave that all your internet connections everything just quiet for 7 days it will change how you will perceive it

[29:43]

it will allow you to start residing in other parts of your mind than the ones that get engaged in cursive thinking, in language, in those activities. That's a small part of our mind. Our mind has way more capacities than that. That's where we usually just... reside most of the time so to just step out of that and you might have some withdrawal symptoms you know it's kind of but can you stand that can you just trust and let that go and not engage in talking with each other be really quiet and still There's a beautiful poem by Pablo Neruda that is which I want to end today.

[30:59]

Keeping quiet. Now we will count to 12 and we will all keep still. Can you hear me? Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. This one time upon the earth, let's not speak any language. Let's stop for one second and not move our arms so much. It would be a delicious moment without hurry, without locomotives. all of us would be together in a sudden uneasiness. The fishermen in the cold sea would do no harm to the whales, and the peasant gathering salt would look at his torn hands.

[32:10]

Those who prepare green wars, wars of gas, wars of fire, victories without survivors, would put on clean clothing and would walk alongside their brothers in the shade without doing a thing. What I want shouldn't be confused with final inactivity. Life alone is what matters. I want nothing to do with death. If we weren't unanimous about keeping our lives so much in motion, if we could do nothing for once, perhaps a great silence would interrupt this sadness, this never understanding ourselves and threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth is teaching us when everything seems to be dead and then everything is alive.

[33:19]

Now I will count to twelve, and you keep quiet, and I'll go. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of the faith.

[34:18]

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